


God's apology

by spiderfire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Dogs, Friendship, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Military Working Dogs, The usual winter soldier warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 02:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3674619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>To: Captain Volkov, Volgograd</b> – Arrangements finalized. Prepare asset and documentation for December 16th transfer. </p><p><b>To: Commander Gidra, Moscow</b> – Canine unit essential for asset stabilization. Prepare?</p><p><b>To: Captain Volkov, Volgograd</b> – No.  Project lifetime will be shorter with hard resets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God's apology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bear Necessities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073598) by [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe). 
  * Inspired by [How They Make You a Weapon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1621463) by [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe). 
  * Inspired by [Florilegium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2105979) by [kvikindi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi). 
  * Inspired by [It Still Moves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1680635) by [kvikindi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi). 



> The prompt was "HAPPY FICS possibly involving BABIES AND DOGS and definitely probably SUPER HUGS FROM SUPER HEROES " for the James Buchannan Barnes Birthday Bash. 
> 
> Well, I am a month late, did not get any babies in, and but there is a dog and a hug and it's a happy fic, at least in comparison to most of what I write. So, happy belated birthday to my favorite Marvel character. :)
> 
> Also a HUGE thank you to kvindi and monicawoe whose stories I took as supplemental canon when writing this thing. I am not really sure if this qualifies as a remix, and this story stands alone, but all four of the (very different) stories linked to were constantly in my mind as I worked on this beast.

The photograph Steve held in his hand had been taken with a telephoto lens a long way from the subject. The photo was grainy, the colors had faded to yellows and browns, but the figure was recognizable enough. Frowning, he turned it over. There was nothing written on the back.

It showed Bucky. Well, it showed the Winter Soldier. He was dressed in dark colors and his arm gleamed dully in the low light. The picture was taken from the side so Steve could not make out his face, but he was wearing a sniper rifle across his back and its long muzzle extended over his head.

Bucky was crouched down, one knee buried in tall grass. His metal hand was on the shoulders of a large, dark-colored dog. Bucky was gesturing with his other hand and the dog was staring in the direction Bucky was pointing, its ears perked and alert. 

There were two more photos in this sequence. In the second the dog was some distance ahead of Bucky, trotting away while Bucky waited, watching. The third one showed the dog coming back, carrying something in its mouth. Steve strained to make out what it was that the dog was carrying but the photo was just too grainy. Something square and dark. 

Sitting back, Steve looked up at Natasha. They were sifting through a decaying carton Coulson had unearthed from some SHIELD storage facility and she was rummaging through the box while he stared at the photos. Mostly it contained documentation that had come from the Soviets when the Winter Soldier had been transferred to US-based Hydra. “What do you make of these?” he asked, holding out the pictures.

She took them, studying them for a moment before handing them back. “I have no idea.”

***

It was lunchtime and the street was crowded with students. Dressed as he was, with his hair pulled into a loose ponytail, jeans, a hoodie with Volgograd University’s logo printed across the front, his hands stuffed in his pockets, it was not hard to pass among them.

He was not sure what had brought him here. Certainly nothing about this street seemed familiar. Not the cheery crowds of students, not the riot of flowers in barrels by the doors, not the noisy vendors hawking everything from t-shirts to snacks. 

However, when he found the right spot, he knew it. Pulling the hood around his face, he walked into the crowded student center. Students clustered around tables, talking, arguing, eating, with their homework spread out among sandwich wrappers. This was not familiar. This building had not been a student center, but the lobby felt right. The pillars, the windows, the shape of the space was right. The couches and tables were wrong. Automatically he turned down a corridor to find the service elevator. 

As he waited for the elevator to come, he scanned the leaflets plastered on the wall. Plays, parties, clubs, the life of the university were layered in brightly colored paper. Current events were stapled over announcements from months ago. All around him and a world apart, the life of civilians was nearly incomprehensible.

The elevator dinged and he stepped in, entering the grey underside of the building. Riding the elevator to the bottom floor, he got off among large trash bins on wheels, mops and shelves of cleaning supplies. Still, there was only the vaguest of senses of familiarity. This room had not been the janitor’s storage space. It had been….

Looking around he remembered long tables with rows of men. He remembered men working on clunky computers with cords tangled everywhere underfoot. He remembered the tables with no computers but papers everywhere. Always there were men, lots of men, men talking in rapid fire Russian which he had struggled to follow, interspersed with fragments French and German and English. Those brief snatches of English were a balm in his ears, sinking in like water on parched ground. Had they been code breakers? Translators? Who knew? But that was also not what had drawn him here. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had only been here once on a mission, delivering a message that was not the sort that came on paper. He was about to leave when he turned and saw it. 

The door was half hidden behind a metal shelf. The shelf was stacked high with packages of paper towels and toilet paper. He shoved the shelf aside. The door was featureless grey metal without even a doorknob. A rectangle was inset into the wall on the left side of the door. Without thinking, he laid his hand on the panel. The sensation was familiar, the way the metal of his hand interacted with the door. Magnets, perhaps. A green light came on and he said, “Codename: Winter Solider”. The lock clicked open. He drew a pistol and entered. 

As he walked, his boots left scuffs in the deep, unmarked dust on the floor and cobwebs broke across his face. Despite the appearance of being abandoned, greenish lights flickered on ten feet in front of him.

He opened doors as he passed them. 

An empty storage room.

An office with a broken desk and no chairs. The desk was on its side and the drawers were gaping and open.

A room with a rat-eaten cot and an old TV set, its screen cracked. He knew that room. He had lived in that room, prepping for missions. 

A surgery with an overturned operating table, rusty instruments in disarray on the floor. He knew that room too. 

A map room with a big square table. Rat turds littered the surface of the table and maps decades out of date hung on the walls. He remembered standing at that table, mismatched hands laid flat on its surface, discussing strategy. 

An armory with row upon row of empty gun racks. He had spent hours in there cleaning and inspecting his weapons. Every one of them, even the little derringer he wore low on his right leg. 

He opened the next door and froze in his tracks.

***

Two weeks after Steve had found the photographs of Bucky and the dog, the phone rang in the middle of the night. Blearily, Steve rolled over and picked it up. “Nat, can’t this wait till morning?” he grumbled. 

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Suddenly awake, Steve sat up. “Nat?”

“No,” a man’s voice said. 

Steve almost dropped the phone. Clutching it to his ear, he asked, “Bucky?”

There was a pause before the reply came. “Yeah. Hello, Steve.”

“Oh my God! Bucky! Are you okay? Where are you? I’ve been searching for you! Are you safe? It’s good to hear you!”

“I’m … okay.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

There was silence from the other end again. “Bucky?” Steve asked.

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“I need your help.”

***

Bucky ended the call and laid the phone flat on the table in his hotel room. His eyes were unfocused and distant as disjointed memories of Steve tumbled through his mind. Steve was coming. Of course Steve was coming.

He had had a plan for seeing Steve again. His war was going to be over. He was going to have his shit together. He was going to let Steve find him. Somewhere safe. But when he had found those cryopods... 

The first one had been empty and so had the second one. While he had been in and out cryopods dozens of times, he had never been able to actually examine one. They had always brought him into the chamber drugged and woozy. By the time he was fully alert again, he had been in his room, the mission parameters burned into his mind. His memories of actual cryo were vague, tinged with terror and impotence when they closed the lid and triggered the machine. And pain. The freezing process (deactivation, he knew they called it, but he could never get himself to use the word) hurt, but at least it was over fast. Reactivation took many excruciating hours.

The pod was made of some thick metal, riveted together in way that had reminded him of submarines. At face level there was a window and under the window, a nameplate. He had smudged the dust off the nameplate and had been unsurprised to see “Winter Soldier” stamped into the metal. Even so, he had stared at the pod for a long time, the pistol dangling forgotten from his metal hand. 

While his cryopod had been dark and dusty and lifeless, he gradually came to realize that the one next to it was humming. He had turned to look at the other pod and he noticed that its dimensions seemed odd. It was too short for a man. Curious, he had rubbed at the name plate. When the word “Zvezda” was revealed, memories hit him in a flood.

How had he forgotten Zvezda? 

The hours they spent in his room, her flopped across his legs while he watched the training videos over and over again. Working together on the practice grounds and in the field as she found a safe path for him. Watching his back while he took a shot. Paired fight training. The feel of her soft ears as he buried his fingers in her fur. Going for a run together, matching strides as their legs consumed mile after mile. The way when they were running she would sometimes grab at his trouser leg and trip him, panting with her tongue lolling to the side as he rolled back to his feet and glared at her. The look on the captain’s face when he discovered that he’d taught her to lay on her back and wave her feet in the air when he aimed a finger gun at her and said “bang”. 

How could he have forgotten her? 

Brutally, he had pushed that thought away. He knew the answer. The same way they had taken his sister from him. The same way they had taken Steve from him. His sister was dead, but Steve had found him. Now he had found Zvezda. 

Helplessly, he had stared at the pod, wondering what to do. He did not know how any of this worked. 

And that is when he had remembered Steve’s friends.

***

“Can you look less like Captain America?” Natasha hissed at him. “Just being here violates a dozen treaties.”

Steve was walking with her and Bruce toward the Volgograd University student center where Bucky was supposed to meet them. He hunched his shoulders, trying to look smaller, but he was coiled tight. Before long he had unhunched and returned to stalking down the sidewalk.

Steve had spent most of the flight pacing the aisle until Natasha had urged him to sit lest he drove Bruce to do something regrettable. He had tried to listen to music but it did not hold his attention. He took out the photos of Bucky and the dog and stared at them, replaying the conversation with Bucky in his mind.

_“I need your help,” Bucky had said._

_“Oh! Anything.”_

_Bucky had paused again and when his words came out, they tumbled together, like he had practiced. “You are friends with Bruce Banner, right? I saw video of you fighting together.” Bucky had come to a stop and then added, “On the internet.”_

_“Well, I know him,” he had replied. “I’m not sure anyone is actually friends with him.”_

_“Do you think you could get him to meet me in Volgograd?”_

_Steve paused. “I don’t know. He doesn’t like planes.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“I’ll ask him. What do you need?”_

_“I don’t know who else to call.”_

_“What’s up? Bucky, talk to me.”_

_“I need help. With a cryopod.”_

_Steve had felt a lump raise in his throat. He knew about the cryopods. He knew about the years they had frozen Bucky. He knew that Bucky had come out of the freezer a blank slate, receptive to whatever lies they had fed him. Natasha had found the diary of one Dr. Lotovsky who had worked on Bucky back in the sixties. “Bucky…no.” His voice had come out in a strangled gasp._

_There had been a stretch of confused silence before Bucky replied, “Oh! Not me, Steve. No. I found Zvezda.”_

_“Zvezda? Who’s Zvezda.”_

_“She’s my dog.”_

She’s my dog. She’s my dog. Bucky’s words had echoed in his mind and he had turned them over and over. He wondered about any dog HYDRA would pair with the Winter Soldier. A dog that they would go through the effort to freeze. What else had they done to that dog? Would it even survive? Just how had that worked?

It was easier to think about the dog than Bucky.

“Steve?”

Bruce had interrupted his thoughts and he had realized that he had been twisting and turning in his seat. 

“What?”

“Just pace, Steve. I’m okay,” Bruce had said. “Natasha, can you help me with this word? Half the letters seem to be missing.”

During the flight Bruce had been working his way through pages of images that Bucky had sent. Images of the apparatus. Images of the pages of a rat-chewed manual he had found. Images of some sort of log that had been left on a clipboard hanging from the device. It was all in Russian. They had been too technical for Bucky to make out, which was why he had asked for help, but Natasha and Bruce together had been making some headway.

And then, there was Bucky, leaning against a pillar, his hands stuffed in the front pocket of a sweatshirt, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He seemed thinner than when Steve had seen him last. Haunted. Bucky pushed off the pillar as they came up, his eyes flickering between the three of them. He said, “This way,” without greeting and led them into the building. 

It was not until they were in the elevator that he said, “Thank you for coming.”

“Where else would I be?” Steve demanded.

A smile flickered across Bucky’s face when he looked at Steve. The look of recognition in his eyes was enough to make Steve ache. 

“Who knew the end of the line would be so far?” Bucky asked. 

“We aren’t there yet.”

The smile was gone, lost in a blank expression that caused an entirely different ache in Steve. “No, I supposed we’re not,” Bucky said. 

Bucky looked at the other two. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Banner. Agent Romanoff.”

“Natasha,” she corrected.

Bucky said something in Russian and Natasha replied. Steve could not make out the look they exchanged. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe it was nothing.

“I just hope I can help,” Bruce said.

“If anyone can, anyone who is not HYDRA, it would be you,” Bucky said.

Bruce ducked his head. “I am not sure how to take that.”

Bucky’s eyes flickered between Natasha and Steve. He seemed about to say something when the elevator dinged and opened. “After you,” he said instead. 

Standing among the mops and trash barrels, he looked at Steve. “This is where they kept me. As best as I can tell I was here from the late seventies until the fall of the Soviet Union when I was transferred stateside. I tried to clean it up a bit, but there is stuff in here...”

“I saw the bank vault in DC,” Steve said tightly.

Bucky nodded. “I know. I was watching you.” Steve looked at him, his eyes wide, but Bucky continued. “That was short term, just for the launch of Insight. This was…” he paused and frowned, searching for the word. “This was my home.” 

Steve’s eyes widened, his heart pounding and he nodded tightly. Images flickered in his mind of Bucky’s apartment in Brooklyn. Of his mom’s apartment smelling of stew that had been cooking for hours. How could this be home?

“He’ll be okay,” Steve heard Natasha say, pulling him back to the present. Steve opened his mouth to retort, but then shut it. After she had released the SHIELD records, she had sat him down and told him enough of her story to make his skin crawl. This was going to be worse. 

Bucky looked at Natasha, studying her. He again seemed about to say something when she added, “You sure about this? This is not a trap?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been in and out of this place for a week. I used my access code to open the door. I was not subtle. I assume that if anyone was still watching, they would have come by now.”

“Points of egress?” Natasha asked.

“There’s a fire escape. Over there,” he pointed toward the far side of the room. “It comes out in an alley. That was the route I mostly used when I was stationed here. So far as I know, once you are in the secure area, there is no other way out.”

Natasha nodded. Bucky looked between the three of them. “Ready?”

***

God, he hated cryo. Every fucking thing about it. The pain. The cold. Being trapped in a body that would not, could not respond. But more than anything, the utter helplessness. Even now, while Dr. Banner tried to revive Zvezda, working from the fragments of the logs and documentation that he had been able to find, there was nothing he could do. He paced the hall, hoping he had found enough, hoping that some crucial step had not been eaten by a rat.

As he waited he tried to remember each step in the imprinting protocol. His imprint had always been complicated – names, faces, timetables and maps burned into his mind. By the time it was over, by the time he had opened his eyes, the painful cold of cryo was gone and he was warmed through. His handler would be sitting next to him sweating in his shirt sleeves because the room’s temperature had been turned up so high. 

He remembered how the instant before he had looked at his handler was a moment of vertigo. The room he had been in, with its monitors and instruments and guards, had made no sense. There would be a name on the tip of his tongue and questions in his mind but he was unable to shape the words. There would be a sense of not being alone, of a ghost at his back, but when he had glanced over his shoulder there was no one there.

Then he met his handler’s eyes and everything clicked into place, pieces fitting together with a physical jolt that reverberated right into his bones. The confusion, the questions, the unknown presence were all forgotten and the mission came into sharp focus. 

Zevzda’s imprint was simpler. They would bring her to him within a few hours of his own imprint, while his purpose was bright and shining in his mind. When the technician opened the door and wheeled her cart in, her fur would still be damp from the cryo and her paws and ears would be twitching and cool. He would lay her on his cot, taking care to move slowly because if he moved too fast, she would cry out in pain. Once she was settled, he would slide to the floor to next to her. The mission would nag at the back of his mind, but he sat with her anyway, stroking her fur until she woke and met his eyes, her tail thumping on the bed in recognition

Once she was alert and warm, the technician would come back and clip a lead to her collar. She would limp off, following the tech out of the room. Sometimes, she would pause at the door and look back at him before a sharp tug on her leash got her walking again. Half an hour later, they would bring her back to him. Her implants had been activated and she was eager to work. A run. Food. Drills. Mission prep. More food. Another run. Sleep. Food. Suiting up. Go. The routine hardly varied from one activation to the next. 

Natasha brought him back to the present when she came out of the cryopod room. “James,” she said, speaking Russian. He looked up. 

It was eerie looking at her. He remembered a red-headed girl walking down the street. It had been her mission, not his. Her fingers had been cool against his palm. Silly, she had called him. Of course he would not remember, she had told him.

Perhaps it was another girl.

He did not think so. 

“Bruce is almost ready for you.” 

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to check on Steve.”

“Thank you,” he repeated. Despite Natasha’s prediction, Steve had not been fine. Half an hour ago, he had gone out, his hands clenched in fists, his shoulders set at an angle that he remembered instantly. Steve had said he was going to keep watch. He had been torn between the desire to follow him and fretting about getting too far from Zvezda.

The door shut behind Natasha. He turned and went into the cryopod room.

The room was different from before. It was alive. Bruce had turned on the computers and monitors. Lights flickered and blinked, numbers scrolling by on the screens. His recollections of this room were blurred at best, but this was familiar.

Bruce looked up as he entered. “I think it’s going well. She’s alive in there. Her core temperature is up around ninety Fahrenheit. Her heart is beating and she’s breathing the fluid that’s in there.”

He nodded, remembering the sensation of thick breaths, forcing the suspension fluids in and out of his lungs, somehow not suffocating on the stuff. 

“Another few degrees and I am going to drain the chamber and open it up.” 

He laid his hand on the lid.

“Her implants are not responding,” Bruce said.

He looked up. “Yeah, they deactivate them for cryo. Hers, anyway.” He frowned, clenching his left hand into a fist. “I don’t remember if they did the same to me.” 

Bruce nodded, his eyes on the diagnostics. “Do you know how to…”

He sucked his lip in and bit it. “I know the deactivate. It’s part of an emergency protocol. They always took her away to activate them.”

Bruce nodded slowly, looking at him over the top of his glasses. “I take it they had similar procedures for you?” 

He shrugged, not looking at Bruce, his eyes fixed on the cryopod. “Guns have a safety for a reason.”

****

Steve was standing outside the student center and his hands were stuffed in his pockets when Natasha found him. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” she asked.

Steve looked at her and then looked back out at the street. There was a steady stream of pedestrians and cars moving along the road.

“I doubt they’re worth that much.”

“Well, something got you. What was it?”

Where to start? The stark cell where they had kept Bucky? The cryopods? The operating room table that had broad leather restraints dangling from it? Or, the fact that Bucky had clearly put in some effort to clean up the basement before they got there? The place must have been filthy because now, what was left was a floor that was streaked with dirt, like it had been inexpertly mopped. There were rat chewed papers but no other evidence of rodents. There was a desk with a broken leg balanced against the wall. The cobwebs were gone from the obvious corners but if you looked closely enough they were still everywhere. Or was it that Bucky had barely spoken to him? Was he jealous of a dog?

Finally he said, “Did you see the schematics Bruce brought up on the dog?”

“What about them?”

Steve shook his head. “Why would they do that?”

Natasha looked at him, “They were making weapons, Rogers, you know that.”

Steve let out a breath. He leaned back against a pillar and looked at the sky. Large fluffy white clouds were silhouetted against bright blue. He was trying not to think about what that meant for Bucky when Natasha hissed, “Steve!”

Abruptly alert, he looked at her. “Nine o’clock,” she said. “Light blue coat. I know her.”

He glanced and saw a young woman in her mid twenties. Attractive, blonde, and she moved just like Natasha. She was walking with a man. Quickly, he scanned the street looking for others, but before he spotted anyone, Natasha added. “Another couple at three o’clock.”

“Any chance this is coincidence?” he said.

She flicked her eyes over and then said, “No.” She surveyed the street. “Too many civilians out here.”

“Sorry,” he said. 

She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the alley.

“What for?” she asked as they ran.

“Blowing our cover.”

“You didn’t. They’re here for Barnes. Or maybe me.”

They hit the fire exit at a run, crashing through the door and plunging headlong down the stairs. In the basement amid the mops and trash cans, Steve paused, searching for something to use as a weapon. He had left his shield on the plane as there was no way to carry it inconspicuously through the city. 

Natasha shouted through the door that went back to the lab, “We’ve got company!” She pulled the door shut and shoved the shelf back in front of it. Then she turned to face the room.

****

The chamber lid was open and Zvezda was just beginning to stir. He was touching the wet fur on her head, caressing a cold, soggy ear. When he stopped, she made soft, whimpering noises so he kept touching her even though his fingers were beginning to ache. 

“We’ve got company!” Natasha’s yell echoed down the hall. Startled, both he and Bruce looked up sharply.

“Damn!”

Bruce looked at him. “It must have been the cryopod that triggered the alert.”

“Makes sense. Mess with a valuable asset…” His eyes flickered from Bruce to the door to Zvezda and then back to Bruce. “Can you sedate her?”

“Why?”

“I should be here when she wakes up.”

“Why?”

He looked down at Zvezda and then back at Bruce. “She’ll recognize me,” he said. “It’ll be safer.”

Bruce angled his head, looking at him.

Outside, there was a tremendous crash.

“Fine,” Bruce said. “Go help them.”

He took off at a run. When he had first arrived, he had just had a pistol and his knives. Since he had been here, he had acquired a rifle and two more handguns. All but the knives were stashed in the office and he grabbed them on his way.

Pausing for a moment at the door, he listened, but the crashing sounds of the fight told him nothing useful. He cracked the door and saw that the shelf of paper towels had been shoved back across the entrance. Taking advantage of the cover, he slid the muzzle of the rifle through the opening. Steve was out of sight, somewhere to his right. Natasha was fighting another woman. Natasha’s right arm seemed to be damaged – she held it close to her body, but even so, she was holding her own. The woman she was fighting was retreating, stepping back while Natasha brandished a metal bar inches from the woman’s face.

He aimed the gun. It was an easy shot and the woman crumpled at Natasha’s feet. Natasha neatly sidestepped the body and looked straight at him. So much for his cover. He dropped the rifle and with a left-handed shove he sent the shelf blocking the door flying. He heard Natasha yell in Russian, “James, no!”

Spinning around the corner he saw one man down and Steve had driven the other up against a wall. He put a bullet in the man on the ground as he stepped over him and then raised his pistol looking for a shot on the man against the wall.

****

It was happening so fast. A gunshot behind him. A crash. Steve landed a punch on one of the men, feeling the bones in the man’s face crush under the blow. When he drew his hand back it was covered in blood. Natasha’s incoherent shout. The other man backed against the wall. An elbow across the man’s temple and he went down. He turned to see how Natasha was doing and froze.

Bucky was down. He was on his hands and knees with his head hanging down. The woman in the blue coat was standing over him, a gun point blank at the back of his head. She looked at Natasha and spoke in a fluid stream of Russian.

Natasha answered in English. “I’d suggest you leave now, Catherine.”

Catherine kicked Bucky, speaking in Russian. Bucky looked up blankly. What the hell? What had they done to him? Steve looked at Natasha and shook his head. Natasha said, “You leave him. You have no claim.”

“He belongs here. We made him.”

“You sold him to the US. He belongs to SHEILD now.”

The words coming out of Natasha’s mouth made Steve’s stomach twist in revulsion.

Catherine’s hands moved so fast that Steve did not realize what had happened until Natasha started to stumble, shot in the leg. He stepped towards her, but she hissed, “Rogers, I am fine.” Looking back at Catherine, he found that she had put the gun against Bucky’s temple. “He was sold on the condition he never come back to Mother Russia. Yet, here he is. He’s ours. Get out of my way and I won’t kill you, traitor.”

There was an unusual sound, an uneven gait, a deep growl. Suddenly, a dark shape launched itself from the doorway, landing against Catherine’s chest. The gun went off as Catherine was knocked over by the blow. She went down with a dark brown and black dog standing on her chest. The dog tore at her with tooth and claw. 

***

He was laying on his side. He was on something hard. Nothing seemed to be hurting but his head. This head was throbbing in time with his heart. 

There were voices. 

“…is he okay?”

“…won’t let me near…”

“…hit his head pretty hard….”

“What happened?”

“…that woman said something to him…”

“…he went blank…”

“...guess that is what he meant about guns…”

“…tried to sedate…did not respond…”

“…just laying there, watching him, licking her paws…”

“…think he is waking…”

Groaning, he rolled on his back. As soon as he did, there was a heavy weight on his chest, unevenly balanced between the hard metal shoulder and softer flesh and bone side. There was a broad insistent tongue on his face. Swatting at it, he grumbled, “Stop…stop it…” He opened his eyes. 

He was looking right into Zvezda’s eyes and her into his. There was flecks of blood on her face. With wonder, he put his right hand on the white flash on her chest, burying his fingers in the wet, cold fur. Later, when she was dry and warm, this thick fur would be soft and deep, but now he could feel her shivering under his touch. He felt her tail wag against his legs in recognition. “Oh, good girl, Zvezda,” he mumbled. Her tail moved faster. 

He was just wearing a sweatshirt over a t-shirt. He had no armor and her claws were digging into his chest. “Let me up, stupid,” he said. Gently, he pushed her off.

He sat up, his head spinning. Resting his hand on her shoulders, the world steadied and he looked at her again. She was alert, ears perked, watching him for commands. 

The others – Steve, that strange giant Steve, Natasha, all grown up now, and the one he did not know, Bruce Banner – they were silently watching him. Natasha was pressing a bloody wad of cloth to her leg. All around them was the carnage of the fight. Half a dozen bodies lay in pools of blood, one with a mop handled protruding from its back. Shelves were overturned. Garbage cans were tossed haphazardly about. Absently he pushed his hair out of his face and looked at Natasha. “I guess it was a trap,” he said.

She smiled faintly.

“I am not so good at finding traps. That’s her job.” He draped his arm over Zvezda, her fur soaking through his sweatshirt almost immediately. He tried to pull her into an affectionate hug but she was tense and alert and trembling and refused to be shifted.

Steve took a step towards him and Zvezda growled in warning, a deep rumble. Steve froze. He shook his head, splaying his hand across her chest, holding her back. “No Zvezda,” he corrected. “Friend.” The growl died in her throat. 

He looked up at Steve, keeping a firm hold on the dog. “Come on over,” he said. “Let her smell you.”

***

They had left the basement wrecked, bodies strewn where they had fallen. Bruce had used the equipment in the lab to activate Zvezda’s implants and confirm they were functioning. Bucky had taken a fire axe to the cryopods and then they had left the lab open, fleeing to Stark’s plane before reinforcements arrived. 

They were in the air now and Steve was hovering, feeling useless. When they first arrived on the plane, Steve had kept busy fetching towels and clean clothes and food and first aid supplies. Now, though, he had nothing to do. 

Despite his protests that he was “not that kind of a doctor” Bruce had splinted Natasha’s arm and was stitching up the wound on her leg, warning her that she needed to see a real doctor when they were back in the States. Bucky had pushed up the arm between two of the big first class seats and he was sitting with Zvezda, examining her. She was flopped on her side, her front half across his legs. She looked dryer now and she did not seem to be shivering anymore. Bucky had a paw in his hand and he was splaying the toes and inspecting it for cuts. 

Bucky looked up and saw Steve watching him. He gave Steve a wan smile as he brushed his hair back from his eyes. Steve sat on the armrest of the seat across the aisle. 

Bucky let go of the dog’s foot put his hand on Zvezda’s head, burying his fingers in her fur. “We used to do this for hours,” he commented. 

Steve blinked. “I’d be careful who you tell that to. It might ruin your reputation.”

Bucky looked down at the dog, his hair falling back in front of his eyes. He slid his hand along Zvezda’s side. 

“They used to play, well, they called them training videos. Mostly it was indoctrination. Anyway, I’d do calisthenics while they played. Body weight exercise – sit-ups, pull-ups, stuff like that. When I was done, I would sit on the floor and she would lay across my legs like this. Half the time, I would fall asleep sitting there. When they woke me, I would be laying on the floor curled up with her.”

“That’s…not what I thought.”

Bucky smiled affectionately at the dog and then looked up and shrugged. “They didn’t give her to me all the time. Only when the mission called for it.” 

Steve looked at Bucky, studying him. Something had changed about his friend’s expression. His eyes were still haunted, but perhaps a weight had been lifted from him. 

Bucky looked back down. “This is not how I planned it, you know. I didn’t want to be FUBARed anymore when I saw you again. I wanted it to be over.” 

Steve looked at him. “We’ll get through it, Buck.”

Bucky pushed Zvezda off his legs and stood. She grunted in protest, but then curled herself into a ball on the seat, tucking her feet and nose under her tail.

Bucky stood in front of Steve. The spacing of the seats on the plane made them stand closer together than was comfortable, but he did it anyway. “I hated cryo,” he said softly. “Everything about it. Watching Bruce reactiva…reviving Zvezda …” He shook his head. “But there was a moment I remembered while I was standing there, a moment that happened each time when I was waking up. I would remember you. Not your name, but your presence. It was a feeling like you had walked up behind me and you were just standing there with me. That feeling was the last thing I had before the imprint took hold and I lost it all.”

Steve put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky looked at him. “I wish I had been there for you,” Steve said. “That you did not have to go through that alone.” 

Bucky pulled Steve into a hug and Steve leaned into to, wrapping his arms around Bucky. The hard texture of Bucky’s arm, the broad muscular of his body was unfamiliar, but after a moment, when the strangeness had passed, they relaxed into each other. For a moment Steve could almost forget it all. It was in that moment that Bucky spoke in his ear. “I didn’t” he said. “I didn’t go through it alone.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Tennessee Williams - _Friends are God's way of apologizing to us ~~for our families~~._
> 
> Thanks to bluedog for the beta and conversation and many people on tumblr for the encouragement. This was going to be a 1k, two day quick write. A month of struggle and a lot more words later, here we go.


End file.
